


More Awake Than I've Ever Been Before

by knight_tracer, lady_ragnell



Series: Rebuild When I Break Down [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Audio Format: M4B, Audio Format: MP3, Audio Format: Streaming, Everybody Lives, F/M, Multi, Nightmares, Podfic, Podfic Length: 45-60 Minutes, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-06-17 17:10:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15466128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knight_tracer/pseuds/knight_tracer, https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/pseuds/lady_ragnell
Summary: Bodhi tries to learn how to talk to Jyn Erso and how to sleep without nightmares.





	More Awake Than I've Ever Been Before

**Author's Note:**

> Cover art by reena_jenkins.

**Podfic Length:** 47:27

 **Streaming:** [Click](http://knight-tracer.parakaproductions.com/Podfic/02%20More%20Awake%20Than%20I've%20Ever%20Been%20Before.mp3)

 **Download Links:** [mp3](http://knight-tracer.parakaproductions.com/Podfic/02%20More%20Awake%20Than%20I've%20Ever%20Been%20Before.mp3) | [m4b](http://knight-tracer.parakaproductions.com/Podfic/02%20More%20Awake%20Than%20I've%20Ever%20Been%20Before.m4b)

****

“You're avoiding Jyn. Explain.”

Bodhi almost bumps his head on the shuttle thruster he's repairing at the sound of K2's voice, not modulated at all for the crowded hangar, so he's no doubt attracted more than a little attention just from that alone. When he manages to straighten, K2 is looming over him in a way that still, after weeks, makes him nervous, and sure enough, a few people are watching.

Then again, Bodhi is growing used to being watched. Rebellion Intelligence hasn't put an official guard on him to make sure he's not an Empire spy, but when he's not around the rest of the team from Scarif, there's often a stone-faced being in a plain uniform somewhere nearby.

Only the silence from K2 reminds him that there's a question on the table, or rather a demand. “I'm not,” he says. “I've bunked with her and the rest of you most nights since we were let out of the care of the medics. I ate dinner with her and Chirrut last night.”

“Ha! 'And Chirrut.' I have not seen you and Jyn alone since we returned from Scarif, and almost everyone else has been alone at least once. Explain.”

Bodhi shrugs and turns back to the thruster. “I haven't thought to seek anyone out. You might as well ask if she's avoiding me.”

“I have,” says K2, sounding aggrieved, and Bodhi flinches. “She said the same thing. But you're avoiding each other.”

“That's very different from me avoiding her,” Bodhi points out.

K2 can't exactly frown, but he manages to give the impression of it anyway. “I'm going to ask Cassian,” he says, and stomps off, no doubt to do just that.

Bodhi thinks about calling after him to tell him that he should do no such thing, but that's going to require even more noise, and he has the humiliating sense that everyone anywhere close to him heard that whole conversation. He doesn't want to make it worse. He'll just have to convince Cassian, and Jyn if necessary, that K2 is seeing things that aren't there.

*

The problem, at its heart, is Galen Erso. Bodhi's not sure if it's the problem from Jyn's end, but then again, he's not sure if she's avoiding him in return at all.

Galen only spoke to Bodhi a few times. Enough times to somehow trust him, and to somehow convince him to defect and to bring a message that could have saved more people if Bodhi had been braver sooner, but in the scheme of friendships, it was nothing at all. They were short conversations, a series of stolen moments, but Galen changed the course of Bodhi's life, and Jyn is his daughter, and Bodhi doesn't know what to do with those two pieces of information.

Once, early on, Galen said he had a daughter, that she would be about Bodhi's age now, and when Bodhi asked politely after her, what she was doing, Galen looked so stricken that Bodhi never asked again.

Galen brought her up, though, on that last day, when he gave Bodhi the message. “I hope she'll forgive me,” he said, and Bodhi didn't need to ask questions. “I hope she's still out there, and that she's free.”

The message itself, the planet-killer, was too big a thing to keep hold of as Bodhi pretended to leave as normal, as he deviated from his route and went to the only rebel he thought he might be able to find. Instead, he wondered about Galen's daughter. He thought that perhaps she was dead, in his worse moments. In his better ones, he thought that maybe she was well-fed and happy, working a job that would keep her out of the Empire's sights. In one particularly unrealistic fantasy, she found him, thanked him, called him a hero.

And now he has Jyn Erso, and her wary eyes, and her cries in the night more nights than not, when he bunks with her. He has Jyn, and neither of them has Galen, and somehow he can't bring himself to talk about any of it.

*

Cassian can, of course. The worse part of Bodhi thinks that it's because Cassian has no personal grief for Galen, is probably glad in some way that's dead. The better knows that Cassian and Jyn went through something together on Scarif that the rest of them didn't, in the archives, and that Cassian will do anything to make sure she's okay.

On top of that, Jyn led them to Scarif, but Cassian watches over them all, their guardian, fights Draven and the rest of the rebellion's commanders to win them all a little bit of trust. He sits in on the meetings Bodhi has with Intelligence, telling them about trade routes and schedules, everything he can remember, and shifts in his chair every time anyone hints Bodhi might be holding something back. He must do similar things for the rest of them.

So of course Cassian joins him in the hangar bay a few hours after his conversation with K2, sitting next to him as he finishes tightening a bolt.

“We all have things we don't want to talk about,” Bodhi says when Cassian sits there in silence, and it's true. The survivors are always together, but there are things they don't talk about. Bodhi and Chirrut and Baze never talk to each other about Jedha, though he thinks they all bleed off some of the grief to others sometimes, bit by bit. Jyn and Cassian don't talk about the archives on Scarif at all, at least not in front of Bodhi.

“There's a difference between not talking about something and not talking to someone.” Cassian isn't a gentle man, but he's gentler with Bodhi than he is with most, maybe unable to shake his first memories of Bodhi, there in Saw Gerrera's cell. “I've noticed she isn't seeking you out either. I thought she would, since you're the one Galen trusted.”

Bodhi isn't an intelligence operative. He isn't sure what tell he gives, but he knows he gives one. That doesn't mean he knows what to say, how to make any of it make sense even in his own head. “So why are you asking me, and not her? Because I'm an easier target to convince?”

“No.” Cassian sounds so sure of it that it eases something in Bodhi's chest to hear it. “Because Jyn and I don't talk about Galen either.”

Jyn and Cassian are a seamless unit, like Baze and Chirrut, like some of the people in the Rebellion Bodhi still barely knows and never talks to, and the bald statement is a surprise, even if it makes sense. “Why do you think we should talk about him, then?”

“Why do you think talking to her alone at all means you'd have to talk about him?” Cassian parries, but he doesn't wait for Bodhi's response. “I'd thought you would both want to memorialize him. He cared about both of you, and you both cared about him.”

Most days, Bodhi questions that. Galen cared about his message, and he trusted Bodhi, or at least was desperate enough to wish he could, but if he cared about Bodhi himself, he would have told him to keep his head down and keep doing his job. Bodhi doesn't regret carrying the message, but he doesn't always think that being the messenger means Galen cared about him. Some days, he wonders if Galen would have asked Jyn to carry the same message. “That's what makes it harder,” he finally says.

“It won't get easier the longer it takes. But it's your choice, and Jyn's. I just wanted to ask if I could help.”

Bodhi nods. “I don't know if you can, or anyone can. I don't want to upset her, and not all of my memories of him are good.”

Cassian stands, and Bodhi automatically follows. “That makes you smart as far as I'm concerned. And I won't bring it up again.”

“Will K2?”

Cassian frowns, considering. “I'll ask him not to. He might be hard to convince, but he knows that sometimes things are hard to talk about, for us.” He clasps Bodhi's shoulder for a moment before he lets go. “You have the time to figure it out. I just wanted to check in. And I hope someday you and Jyn will do the same, even if you don't talk about Galen.”

It's hard to imagine that day coming, but Cassian looks honestly hopeful, and Bodhi doesn't want to disappoint him. Even so, he can only shrug. “We'll see.”

“We will.” Cassian's smiles are always warm, and always brief, and always make Bodhi smile automatically in return. “Now, I think there's food in the mess besides the latest shipment of ration bars. Want to get some before it's gone?”

Bodhi welcomes the change of subject, and the thought of food after a long day in the hangar, so he asks Cassian about base relocation efforts even knowing he doesn't have the clearance to hear about them, and Cassian tells him what he can. They're the first to dinner, joined first by Baze, then Jyn and K2, then Chirrut, the group of them always a little way from the rest of the Rebellion.

Now that K2 has mentioned it, it's hard not to notice that even in a group, Bodhi and Jyn rarely say anything to each other.

*

The whole Rebellion knows that Jyn and Cassian are _something_. Some of the pilots talk about it when they don't realize Bodhi is listening, about how Jyn and Cassian came back from Scarif and now might as well be married like Baze and Chirrut. There's not as much gossip about them as there is about Leia Organa, or Han Solo, and certainly not Luke Skywalker, but people talk.

Despite that, as far as Bodhi knows, they aren't together. They do pair off, often enough, but just as often Cassian will spend an evening with Bodhi, or Jyn with Baze and Chirrut. They spend some nights together, but they all do that. Bodhi expects it will happen—they're too close for anything else to come of it—but it hasn't yet.

It's a shock, then, when two days after his talk with Cassian, Bodhi knocks on his door to ask to spend the night, a habit so ingrained that he doesn't even think to wait after his knock, and finds Jyn and Cassian kissing like they never plan to come up for air. When the door hisses shut behind him, they startle apart, both of them reaching for weapons, and then stare when they see him.

“I'll come back,” he says, into the awkward silence, and ducks out before either of them can muster a response.

He's halfway to Baze and Chirrut's room before he remembers why he hadn't gone there in the first place. Chirrut never has any worries about telling the rest of them when he and Baze want privacy, and tonight is one of those nights. K2 has been taking night shifts monitoring communications, as many droids with short charge times do, so Bodhi can't go to him either.

Instead, he goes back to his own barely-used quarters. He shouldn't have them to himself, since he doesn't have an official rank with the Rebellion, but he's supposedly a hero and Command still doesn't trust him, and the combination means that he has a room that used to be a closet for cleaning supplies and still smells slightly antiseptic. He doesn't sleep there often, and never alone, at least not the whole night, but tonight, it seems, he does.

Jyn and Cassian deserve what they want, especially if it's each other, but Bodhi can't help feeling a little cast out, no warning to prepare for nights and nightmares alone.

It's too quiet to sleep, even with the white noise of an always-active base just on the other side of a thin door. Bodhi relies too much on having other people near him, on falling asleep to the sounds of his breathing, and he lays on his side and waits for exhaustion to give him at least a few hours of sleep.

His door hisses open after a while, and Bodhi doesn't move to look over his shoulder and see who it is. Cassian, no doubt, here to check on him, invite him to spend the night with he and Jyn. “I'm fine,” he says. “You should go back.”

“Cassian suddenly found an urgent Intelligence-related task that needs to be done tonight,” says Jyn, and that does make him roll over just in time for her to shut the door behind her, the sliver of light from the corridor winking out. “Shove over, we never stay with you because your bed is the smallest.”

Bodhi does, still too surprised to do anything but obey, but when she kicks off her boots and climbs into his bed, he manages to pull his words together. “You don't have to be here. If the two of you are together now, I'm happy for you. I should have knocked.”

“It was no one's fault.” Bodhi has shared beds with all of them, now, in various combinations. Cassian reaches out in the night, but Jyn always keeps to herself, present but not touching. On his small bed, they're pressed together anyway, her chest to his back when she urges him to roll over again. “We should have remembered that you would be coming soon.”

“Because I can't sleep alone.”

“I can't either. I tried, a few weeks ago when Cassian was working through the night. You remember. I ended up with you and Baze and Chirrut.”

“I'll get better. You and Cassian deserve privacy, and Baze and Chirrut too. It's past time. No one else is like this.”

“No one else survived Scarif.” They breathe in the silence until she speaks again. “And you intend to be alone, when the rest of us still have support, just because we're … something to each other?”

Bodhi is finally feeling like he might sleep, with Jyn's warmth right there, and some of his tension from the day releases. “I won't be alone. There's still K2.” And then, because K2's questions and his conversation with Cassian are ringing in his mind days later, “Jyn—”

“Later. Some of us have a morning shift tomorrow.”

He certainly does, but as far as he knows she doesn't. Still, it seems that whatever there is between them, they aren’t going to talk about it now, so he closes his eyes, and this time, he's asleep within minutes, and wakes in the morning to Jyn putting her boots on.

“Let us decide how much privacy we want,” she says, and then she's out the door, off to begin her day and leaving him to begin his.

*

As it turns out, Bodhi spends his first night alone only a few days later. Cassian and Jyn have been sent out to bring in some allies to replenish their forces after Scarif, after Yavin, and Draven, it seems, is finally willing to give Bodhi some measure of trust. He's assigned to shuttle a shipment of rations on one leg of the journey to a new base, and spends two days on the trip, relieved with familiar boredom.

Jyn and Cassian are still gone, and K2 as well, when he returns, but Chirrut and Baze greet him over dinner, and the three of them eat mostly in silence.

“They should be back tomorrow,” Baze eventually says. “You can stay with us tonight.”

Bodhi thinks about saying he doesn't need to, but one night alone without waking up from a nightmare was miracle enough. He's grateful for the company. “We'll have to work out a schedule so that the two of you and Jyn and Cassian can both get your privacy, once they're back.”

Chirrut raises his eyebrows in the way that he always does when he's about to bait someone. “And why would we need to give them privacy?”

It's not Chirrut's business the same way it's not Bodhi's, but Bodhi doesn't know if it's a secret, either, and if Bodhi is going to be switching off nights with them, interrupting one pair or the other when he can't bear to be alone and they don't all want to be together, they deserve to know. “I'm sure you can guess,” he says, some kind of compromise.

“I've got no idea what you mean,” says Chirrut, all innocence, and Baze elbows him in the side and Bodhi chucks a crumb of rations at him that harmlessly hits a fold of his robes where he no doubt didn't even feel it (though the face Chirrut makes in his direction would imply otherwise).

“We'll figure something out,” Baze says, gruff, and changes the subject before Chirrut can press too much more.

*

Jyn, Cassian, and K2 come back tired but triumphant, and the whole group of them spends a night stuffed into Cassian's quarters, which are far too small for six, even if K2 just sits upright and charges instead of taking up too much space on the floor or the bed. Chirrut claims that his old bones are hurting him and pulls Baze onto the bed, and the rest of them curl up in blankets and cushions on the floor.

Bodhi wakes in the morning with a sore back, with Cassian sprawled over him and Jyn already awake, sitting up and watching them with a smile that's halfway to exasperated but gets warmer when she sees that Bodhi is watching her. “Better you than me.”

“You don't enjoy not being able to get up in the mornings?” Bodhi runs through his schedule for the day, but he won't be expected in the hangar or reporting to the officers in charge of supply transport for a while yet, so he doesn't have to elbow Cassian off of him. “Or roasting to death?”

“We'll be grateful for the heat where the Alliance is moving to, I hear,” says Jyn, who shouldn't have a better clearance than Bodhi does but seems to know everything just because she ignores three quarters of the things that come out of Draven's mouth. “Any more field missions coming up?”

“Not that I know of. I think the first one went well, though.”

“Some of us are trying to sleep,” says Chirrut from the bed, pitched to cut through the sleep of anyone still trying. Baze mutters several curses but doesn't seem inclined to move, and Cassian snorts once and rolls over, leaving Bodhi a little more free to move. “People who want to talk to should go eat breakfast.”

Bodhi wonders, dismayed, exactly how many people K2 has talked to about his concerns about Bodhi and Jyn, but when he looks at Jyn, she's already moving to stand, with no hesitation that he can see. “Come on, Rook, I'm hungry and he'll sleep all day.”

Baze says something else mumbled and displeased, and Bodhi extracts himself from Cassian, puts on the clothes he shoved under Cassian's bed the night before, modesty drummed out of him after the Imperial Academy and even more after weeks in the close quarters of the Rebellion. By the time he's done, Chirrut is pointedly and falsely snoring and Cassian has grabbed a pillow to hold on to.

It's still early. The halls of the station where the Rebellion is currently hidden in between bases are mostly deserted, the night shift not quite done and the early shift only starting to drag themselves out of bed. Jyn and Bodhi walk in silence, Bodhi yawning and Jyn scowling in a way that probably means she wants to mirror him.

“How was your first solo mission?” she asks when they finally make it to the mess, where the early workers are scowling into their caf and the only food laid out so far is ration bars.

Bodhi wants to say that he's not a child, that he was a cargo pilot doing solo runs for years and that it wasn't his first mission. If it were Cassian asking, he might. But Jyn has her own issues with being trusted by the Rebellion, as Galen's daughter, as Saw Gerrera's apprentice, as the wildcard who incited a suicide mission. If she were trying to do something on her own and not with one of the most respected Intelligence operatives around, she would have even more troubles. “Uneventful, and interrupted frequently by people with quick questions about where exactly my route was going to take me next.”

“They'll have to stop that soon. We don't have the resources to assume that you're a traitor. At least half the pilots who flew over Yavin were Academy defectors.”

Most of them were a little after Bodhi's time, but he recognized names from gossip at the rare times when he was with other Imperial pilots, cargo or fighter, who liked to take bets on races and war games at the Academy. No one knows the names of the pilots from those classes who didn't defect, who died on the Death Star or in TIEs, because the Empire doesn't bother to publish them. “Unfortunately, I made a name for myself.”

“Everyone trusts this Solo character without a blink, and he's a damn smuggler, but no, you save the Rebellion and have to be babysat,” Jyn grouses, and pours them both out a cup of caf.

“I didn't do that.”

“If you acted like you knew you did, they might trust you more,” she points out. “Cassian and I are probably going to be sent out again, to scout for anything like Imperial bases around the planet we're using as a new base. We might be going as part of a supply run, to make it less obvious what we're doing. Want to run a mission or two with us?”

“I'd love to, as long as they don't think we're going to go rogue on them again.”

Jyn rolls her eyes. “Has anyone told you that some of the fighter pilots are talking about naming a whole squadron Rogue? They don't want to refill Blue—we're the heroes people know, so we're the ones they'll name it after, but they wouldn't even trust you to fly with it.”

“They shouldn't, my scores with small fighters were never particularly good.” Jyn scowls at him, and he shrugs. “I know it's not what you mean, but it's true. Even if I can't say I'll like hearing it get called.”

“Doesn't it make you angry? If I were you, I'd want to walk away by now.”

Bodhi drinks some of his caf, because he's not sure how to answer that. “I worked for them. I didn't use it to train as a pilot always intending to leave like some of the pilots here claim. I just needed the money and wanted to fly.”

“Why do you stay?”

Jyn sounds honestly curious, so Bodhi doesn't say anything about wanting to make up for collaborating, for the horrors that happened on Jedha and Scarif and Alderaan because he wasn't fast enough with a message, even if all of that is true. Instead, he tells a different truth. “My family is here.”

Cassian and Baze arrive not long after, Baze still scowling and Cassian a little scattered the way he only is on mornings where he doesn't have to be sharp. His smile when he sees Bodhi and Jyn sitting there, talking, makes Bodhi's breath come a little short.

*

Somehow, Cassian gets permission for Bodhi to go with he and Jyn on their mission. They fly in a separate shuttle, piloted by K2, and Bodhi flies on his own again, carrying supplies that will let construction crews finish building the base. Jyn seems to relish hailing Bodhi by the callsign Rogue One even if they aren't flying as a wing, and by the end of their trip through hyperspace, Bodhi is even laughing about it.

Once they're out, though, the laughter quickly fades. Jyn and Cassian and K2 peel off to scout local space for any sign the Imperials know where they're moving, and Bodhi is faced with the sight of Hoth, an icy, inhospitable world where the Rebellion will be making its next home and its next stand. He's brought tools to carve bigger spaces for storage, for ships, for everything an army needs, and heating coils to keep all the organic beings alive.

The construction crew hails him cheerfully as Rogue One, either because word spread or because Jyn hailed to tell them to, and Bodhi lands to a surprisingly warm welcome. The people readying the base for the Rebellion don't have Command's mistrust of Bodhi. Instead, they want to hear about Scarif, about the grenade someone else saved him from, the last desperate minutes Bodhi spent flying around looking for allies to rescue, looking for _anyone_ to rescue, before the shockwave came through.

One of the women there asks if he's going to be put in charge of the ambulance corps the Rebellion desperately needs, and Bodhi blinks at the thought. If an Imperial pilot fails badly enough to need a zero-gravity rescue, they're not worth saving in the Empire's mind. Of course the Rebellion is different in this too.

“Probably not, since I don't know anything about being a medic,” says Bodhi, but he keeps the thought in the back of his mind for a time when they trust him a little more, and have the time to train him to keep someone alive long enough to get back to better help.

He's assigned to stay until Cassian and Jyn are ready to return after their survey, so he lets the construction crews put him to work, moving ice and modifying some of the drills so they'll work better in the cold. The skeleton crew on Hoth continues to treat him without the suspicion the main force of the Rebellion gives him, and they all sleep together in the same medium-sized carved out cavern, shivering but warmer together.

It's another day or so before Cassian and Jyn arrive just in time for dinner, K2 behind them, complaining that the cold is slowing down his circuits. Jyn slides into a seat next to Bodhi, stealing a corner of his ration bar off his plate even though she has one of her own. Cassian sits down across from them, bundled up in a warm coat but otherwise unbothered by the cold. “How's the base?”

“Cold,” says Bodhi. “Friendly, so far.”

“I feel bad for everyone from a warm planet who has to come to this base,” says Jyn, who isn't wearing anything heavier than usual and seems to be steadfastly refusing to shiver. “How are you doing, coming from a desert? Are Chirrut and Baze going to freeze?”

“Not as much as Skywalker is, I hear. Jedha gets cold at night but Tatooine doesn't.” Bodhi shrugs. “And I haven't spent much time on Jedha for years now. I'm used to all kinds of weather.”

“Things looking secure?” Cassian asks, interrupting before Jyn can answer. “Supplies coming in handy?”

“I've been modifying drill engines all day, and I don't know much about security, but you'd know more about that. Any luck?”

“Depends on what you think luck is, in this context. No sign of Imperial installations, anyway,” says Cassian, knowing as Bodhi does that if there were any, Bodhi wouldn't have the clearance to know.

“Very boring mission,” says Jyn, but she grins at Bodhi like they're in on some kind of joke.

“The boring missions are the best kind,” he agrees.

“What are the sleeping quarters like here?” she asks. “Cold, I imagine.”

“Right now, communal. We're used to that, anyway. Though then the body heat makes the ceiling and walls melt a little, so expect to get dripped on. We're going to have to figure out some kind of sealant, but that's not my area of expertise.”

K2 launches into a long discussion of all the kinds of sealant that might work, which carries them through dinner and through most of the time after it, until it's time to sleep and K2 excuses himself back to the shuttle to charge and the three of them go to the communal room, where Bodhi finds that Jyn has no shame inserting herself between him and Cassian, even if she won't admit that she's cold.

It was better than being alone, the first night he spent in the communal room at Hoth, but it feels much better with the two of them there as well, familiar people he doesn't mind being close to.

*

Bodhi makes two more trips to Hoth before the Rebellion moves there in force. The first time, he goes alone, spending a night in transit alone and a night in the quarters on Hoth, where the carving out is going fast but the construction crew and Bodhi still sleep in the communal room. The second time, he's assigned to bring Mon Mothma. It's a safety measure to bring Command one by one, in unexpected vessels, and he's not sure if it's luck or meddling that has him bringing her.

For most of the trip, she doesn't seem to have much to say. She sits in the cargo hold and works, and smiles briefly at him when he brings her ration bars.

When he radios to tell her they're only a little way out, and about to come out of hyperspace, she comes up to the cockpit and stands in the doorway until he gestures her to the co-pilot's seat. “Have you visited Hoth before?” he asks, since it seems she's there to see through the end of the journey.

“No.” Her smile is a little wry. “I can't say I've had the opportunity, or that I'm looking forward to it.”

“I hear they finally found a sealant that keeps icemelt from dripping on you if your body heat warms a room up too much, so there's that, anyway.”

Mon Mothma doesn't respond, and Bodhi doesn't know what to say to her, so he lets the silence continue until she chooses to break it. It takes until they're out of hyperspace before she does it, while they both stare at the ice-white expanse of Hoth getting bigger in front of them. “What do you want to do for the Alliance?” she finally asks, which is bald enough to startle him. “You may only be staying because of Captain Andor and Jyn Erso, but what do you want to do? We can't afford to keep you on the sidelines.”

“I'm not only staying because of Jyn and Cassian, or even the rest of my friends. I just want to make up for helping them. The Empire, I mean. If that means flying cargo, then I'll do that. If it means fixing ships, I'll do that. If you start an ambulance corps, I'll fly medics around.”

“You aren't going to ask me to put you in an X-Wing?”

Bodhi considers that. “I will if you want me to,” he finally says. “But if I wasn't good enough for an Imperial TIE, I don't know if you want me flying with Luke Skywalker and Wedge Antilles.”

“We need all the pilots we can get. But I'll keep it in mind. And if you aren't just here for Andor and Erso, that makes a difference too.”

That silences Bodhi while he passes into Hoth's atmosphere. The Rebellion may have more than a few reasons to be reluctant to trust him, but he's far from the only Imperial defector. All of them are, in their own ways, compromised, from the double agents to the spies to the people like Bodhi, the former collaborators. If the question is his commitment beyond caring for his friends, that might be something he can fix. “I'm not just here for them. It's only that I wouldn't be here if it weren't for them.”

“And they wouldn't be if it weren't for you,” she reminds him, the closest anyone in Command has gotten to mentioning Scarif in a long time, and they sit in silence until he docks at Hoth and Mon Mothma sweeps away to the established Command center to let the Rebellion know she's arrived.

*

The quarters on Hoth, once they're carved out, are bigger—lack of space isn't the issue—but more people are assigned to each one than usual just to keep everyone warm. Bodhi is assigned a room with Cassian and Jyn, with space for K2 as well, and Chirrut and Baze are assigned in a connecting room.

“Finally, enough beds for all of us in one place,” says Chirrut with approval, once he's felt his way around. “I'm an old man, I can't sleep on the floor.”

“None of us ever made you sleep on the floor,” Cassian points out, but Chirrut never pays attention to things that don't benefit him. “And you're helping to teach the Jedi, so they'll give you whatever you want.”

“I'm only meditating with him to keep in practice,” Chirrut says, serene, and goes about telling Baze how to arrange their things so they'll get the fewest cold drafts.

Since they seem occupied, Bodhi turns to Jyn and Cassian, who must have been on a mission until the last minute before the base move, judging by how tired they look. “They won't mind if I drag my cot next door sometimes, if the two of you want privacy.”

Cassian puts his hand on Bodhi's shoulder. “This is your home. We're not going to kick you out of it, I promise.” Behind him, Jyn is watching, frowning a little. “You're always welcome.”

“It's too cold to have sex, just stay there,” Chirrut calls through the open door connecting the rooms.

Baze appears in the doorway a few seconds later. “Don't listen to him, you're welcome to stay with us.” He frowns at Jyn. “But you shouldn't need to very often, I'd say.” Something passes between he and Jyn and Cassian, a series of looks Bodhi can't quite decode, before he disappears again, grumbling something at Chirrut when he asks what's going on.

“No matter what, Bodhi, you're more important than sex,” says Jyn, frank about it when it makes Cassian and Bodhi both look away, embarrassed. “And for now I want to sleep for a week, so it doesn't matter as long as you're quiet about unpacking.”

*

Sharing a room but not a bed with Jyn and Cassian turns out to be, as a week passes, equal parts comforting and strange. When they're in a room together, usually he's right next to them, between them or to one side, and hearing their breathing from several feet away instead is strange to say the least. On the other hand, though, no one is expecting him to be anywhere else. If Jyn and Cassian want to have sex, they never ask him to go elsewhere, and Bodhi only spends one night in the room next door, when Chirrut offers to do overnight meditation with Skywalker and Bodhi doesn't want to leave Baze on his own.

Even then, in the morning, Cassian and Jyn make a point of bracketing him at breakfast. He'd expected that, with them together, he'd find himself alone more often, or with K2, the other four falling naturally into pairs. Instead, the two of them coming closer together seems to have brought them closer to him as well.

That, or Hoth, changes his routine bit by bit. Draven and the rest of Alliance Command seems, some more grudgingly than others, to finally accept that Bodhi isn't going to betray them if he's allowed to do more than maintenance on the Alliance's fleet, and he's sent out on supply and escort missions every week or so, some alone and some with strangers and some, rarely, with his team.

When he's not out on a mission, though, or scrubbing plates in the mess, or changing the power couplings in a finicky X-wing, he's with Cassian and Jyn. The others are there too, of course, and the two of them have missions of their own, rarely apart these days, but Bodhi stops being surprised when Jyn sits with him in companionable silence over breakfast or when he looks up from fixing a ship and finds Cassian holding out the wrench he needs.

“You're talking to Jyn now,” K2 says, pleased, when Bodhi has been sent on a mission to acquire supplies that will be helped along by an Imperial droid.

“It would be hard not to, when we share a room.”

It shouldn't be possible for a droid to give him a reproachful look, but K2 manages it. “I am speaking of the conversation we had approximately—”

“I know what you're talking about,” Bodhi says hastily, with instant regret for trying to bait K2 at all. It always backfires. “There never was anything wrong, you know. Sometimes there are just things that two people don't want to discuss, and that it's hard to avoid discussing.”

“Organics,” K2 says scathingly. “Cassian is happier about it, anyway.”

Cassian has a lot of reasons to be happy these days, from having a new secure base rather than a fleet of ships holding the Rebellion to having Jyn in his bed, but Bodhi knows better than to bring that up with K2. “I think we're all a little happier on Hoth, even if it's cold.”

“The cold does keep my processors running efficiently without overheating,” K2 says, which is as much of an agreement as Bodhi can expect.

*

Of all of them, Cassian seems to have the fewest nightmares. He went through no less than the rest of them did, on Scarif and for years before it, since he was a child and the Republic fell, but he's been fighting for so long that it no longer seems to disturb his sleep. Bodhi is used to nightmares, his own and other people's: they dream about Jeha, about Eadu, about Scarif, about a hundred things that could have gone wrong or could go wrong now, when they're still in the fight.

When he wakes in the night to Jyn standing over his bed, he thinks it's her nightmare that drove her out of bed to check on her team. More than any of the rest of them, she dreams about them all dying on Scarif, the worst-case scenario of what could have happened if a soldier's aim with a bomb had been a little better and they'd lost the shuttle and Bodhi's life. Sometimes she looks at them in panic when she's just woken up with a cry, like she's not sure they're alive, and he thinks that's what happened, though he didn't hear any noises.

“Come to bed,” she says to his surprise. “Cassian needs you.”

That gets him upright before he can think about it, looking over at their bed. He doesn't know what he's expecting, but it's not Cassian laying flat on his back, eyes open, watching the ceiling instead of them. “What does he need?” he asks. The thought of comforting Cassian seems incongruous when it's so often the other way around.

“Both of us. You can sleep there as easily as here. Easier.” Jyn walks to the bed, trusting that he'll follow, and he never considers doing otherwise. She climbs to the far side of the bed, and that makes it obvious where he's meant to be, on Cassian's other side.

“We all survived,” Bodhi says as he settles in, slinging an arm around Cassian because Cassian is usually the one to do it first and it's strange that he doesn't do it right away. It's one of the first things any of them say after a nightmare, though sometimes it's cold comfort.

Cassian turns his face until he can see Bodhi properly. More than panic or fear, it looks like the cold, professional mask of an intelligence agent, and it makes Bodhi wonder how often Cassian hides other emotions with the expression. “The war isn't over. And you're flying missions again, too many of them without us to watch your back.”

Bodhi looks over Cassian to Jyn, but she just nods. “Do you want to ground me?” he asks, honestly curious.

“No. I just want you to be safe.”

Bodhi considers that. He was safe with the Empire, for a given value of it. He chose other things over safety, but they all know that. He chose _them_ over safety. “You can ask Draven if he'll trust me with a blaster, then.”

“You know how to shoot one?” Jyn asks.

He shrugs. “Anyone who got through the Academy does, even the cargo pilots. We had to protect our cargo from thieves and smugglers if need be, after all.”

Somehow, that seems to be what shakes Cassian from whatever is happening to him, at least enough that his face softens into a wry smile. “Someone really does need to introduce you to Solo. It would be an interesting conversation.”

From what Bodhi can tell, Solo doesn't do much around the base but threaten to leave and argue with Princess Leia, and he doesn't have much interest in smugglers' tales, but anything that makes Cassian smile is worth pursuing. “As long as you're the one who introduces us.”

“I wouldn't miss it.” Cassian finally shifts, turning his face into Bodhi's shoulder, relaxing a little, if not as much as Bodhi would like. Jyn moves closer too, until the two of them are keeping Cassian in a tight hold that Bodhi can only hope is comforting. “Thank you,” he says when Bodhi is starting to wonder if he's falling asleep again. “I'll talk to Draven about getting you a blaster in the morning.”

*

Bodhi wakes in the morning to Jyn's face over his. There's a moment of disorientation, the fleeting glimpse of a dream no doubt brought on by Cassian's worries fading before it would have become a nightmare, and he remembers where he is, and why he's there. Cassian has drifted in the night, burrowing into the blankets so only the top of his head is visible, and Jyn's in an awkward position so she can wake Bodhi.

“Do you need to get out for a shift?” he whispers, unwilling to break the quiet.

“Neither of you is ever going to do it,” she says, and before he can ask what she means, she's kissing him. It isn't gentle—Jyn is never gentle—but it's thorough, a point in an argument he didn't know they were having.

The thermal regulation is glitching again, he notes absently when she finally releases him. Their breath is misting a little in the air, just enough for him to know it's going to be a misery getting out of bed. “Neither of us. You mean Cassian?”

“I mean all of us. But you have all these ideas about him and me, and about my father, and about the Alliance, and I'm tired of waiting. If Cassian is worried you'll get hurt on a mission, we should be making sure there aren't any regrets.”

There's enough in that to stun him, but Jyn doesn't seem to expect a response. She kisses him again, and this time he's awake, can kiss back through the shock. “I thought the two of you were happy together,” he manages when they stop again. “After Scarif, you seemed so close.”

Jyn frowns and bends away, no longer arranged awkwardly over Cassian to reach him. “We are happy, and we want to be happier. You might not have been in the archives with us, and I don't know if I'll ever be able to talk about them, but you got us out, working on that logic. We're all close.”

“And it's you, too? Not just him?”

To his relief, Jyn takes a few seconds to think about that. “It took me longer. There's my father between us, and I didn't know how much of it had to do with him. But yes. Otherwise I would have just asked if we could share. And you? Is it me too, or just him?”

Bodhi does her the kindness of taking a few seconds of his own to think. He thinks about the Jyn Erso he imagined when Galen mentioned her, and the Jyn Erso he knows now, who she is and how well they know each other. He loves her and Cassian the way he loves everyone else from the team from Scarif, the closest thing to family he has left, but there's something different about the two of them. Different, he thinks, in the right way. “It's both of you.”

Jyn smiles, more satisfied than joyous, but he trusts that more. “Then I think perhaps we'll figure it all out.”

Under the covers, Cassian's hand moves just far enough to find Bodhi's, to take it and hold on tight. A moment later, he ducks his head out of the blankets, and he's more solemn than Bodhi would have expected, but he reaches out without hesitation for Bodhi, and Bodhi is ready to reach back.

*

That night, after an argument with Draven about giving a Bodhi a blaster at least while he's not on base, plenty of smugness from K2, not to mention Baze and Chirrut, and a very strange congratulatory comment from Han Solo, Bodhi finds himself in their bed again. It's a novelty to be invited not because they feel safer together but because they simply want him there, and Bodhi finds himself shy as he climbs in, even as they shepherd him into the middle.

Cassian looks settled in a way Bodhi doesn't think he recognizes, and he's rash with Bodhi's security clearance while he talks about his next few missions, securing allies and seeing what recovery efforts the Empire is making after the planet-killer. He nods off early, after only a few kisses, apologizing through a yawn as he dozes, and Bodhi smiles, fond and too awake to sleep.

Jyn seems to be feeling the same. She taps Bodhi's shoulder to gain his attention and waits until he turns away from Cassian, moving in until they're sharing a pillow. “My father,” she begins, and then shakes her head when he tenses. “My father was my hero, even when I thought we were just farmers. He used to call me Stardust, and he loved his work almost as much as he did his family.”

Bodhi takes a deep breath to answer, to let them both tell their fragmented tales of the man they both knew and didn't know at all, and the two of them talk about it until they fall asleep, Cassian's breathing deep and quiet behind them the whole time.

None of them have any nightmares.


End file.
